Learning Climate: The "quality and character of school life" based on how members of the school community experience school and the school's "norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching, learning and leadership practices, and organizational structures" (Reference: National School Climate Council). National School Climate Council
Engage all members of the school community in foundational learning opportunities to help them understand their role in schoolwide SEL.
Develop a coordinated approach for supporting students’ social and emotional learning across the school, classrooms, homes, and communities.
In addition to driving overall schoolwide SEL implementation, PDSA improvement cycles also provide a powerful structure for quickly testing specific innovative strategies to support SEL.
Support staff in cultivating personal social and emotional competencies and fostering the competencies of peers and students.
Explicit SEL instruction refers to consistent opportunities for students to cultivate, practice, and reflect on social and emotional competencies in ways that are developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive.
Establish Discipline Policies that Promote SEL
When discipline policies and practices are supportive, developmentally-appropriate, and equitable, they reinforce SEL and support stronger relationships, student engagement, and equitable outcomes.
Expand adult learning through structures such as professional learning communities and mentoring opportunities.
Belonging and Emotional Safety
When teachers build the structures that support belonging and emotional safety, they lay the groundwork for students to focus on learning (Sergiovanni, 1994 in Darling-Hammond et al., 2017).
Aligning SEL and Academic Objectives
As your SEL team works with teachers to align SEL and academic objectives, it’s also important to consider how the content is delivered so that it supports the practice of social and emotional competencies.